California Governor Gavin Newsom has just granted the largest mass commutation in United States history, converting all 548 criminals on death row to life without parole. In one action, Newsom reduced the national death row population by roughly 30%. California has not executed anyone since 2006 and has carried out only 13 executions since California voters reinstated the death penalty in 2008.
Newsom called the move a difficult but “righteous action.” In his letter he wrote that “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system and diminishes each of us.” He argued the system is a failure that cannot be applied fairly and has risked executing the innocent, and said the state cannot “morally kill” those convicted of brutal crimes. Life without parole, he said, is the most severe punishment he can lawfully and ethically impose. The ACLU praised the commutations as ending a “racist, error-prone, and inhumane punishment.”
The decision is largely symbolic because of the moratorium Newsom formalized in 2019. It is not cost-free or consequence-free. California has spent an estimated $6 billion on its death-penalty system since 1978 for those 13 executions. Ending the capital process for these cases could save millions annually in specialized court costs, but that is secondary. The primary questions concern democratic will, justice for the worst crimes, and the standing of victims’ families.
California voters have repeatedly declined to abolish the death penalty. In 2012, Proposition 34 failed. In 2016, Proposition 62 (which would have replaced death sentences with life without parole, including retroactively) was rejected by roughly 53 percent of voters, while a competing measure aimed at speeding appeals narrowly passed. Newsom’s 2019 moratorium and today’s mass commutation override those outcomes by executive and clemency power rather than by changing the law through the legislature or the ballot. Roughly two-thirds of the commutations still require approval by at least four of the seven justices on the California Supreme Court. The death penalty remains on the books for future cases.
The 548 include some of the state’s most notorious offenders, among them Richard Allen Davis, who was convicted of the 1993 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, has long opposed Newsom’s approach, describing blanket relief as siding with “baby killers, cop killers, spree killers and serial killers.” He has argued that families worked through the system for decades of trials and appeals, and that the governor is undoing sentences recommended by juries and imposed by judges. Other victims’ rights advocates have called the move a grotesque violation of victims’ rights and a second major affront to voters’ decisions. Some family members of murder victims support ending capital punishment on personal grounds, but the dominant reaction from organized victims’ groups has been opposition.
Newsom is term-limited and leaving office amid speculation about possible 2028 presidential ambitions. The practical effect is that the worst offenders already sentenced will die in prison of natural causes rather than by execution. Whether that outcome better serves justice, public safety, fiscal responsibility, or the dignity of victims is the debate Newsom has forced into the open. The voters who kept the death penalty on the books, the juries that imposed the sentences, and the families who lived through the trials will continue to have their own answers.
